#17 - "EVO" ... I think you make some excellent observations about privacy issues.
I would like to point out that many of the issues you raise already exist for the emerging interactive TV specifications - which are all based on the same Java foundations (much more so than you might realize).
It is pretty confusing - but hang in there ...
First there was DVB-MHP (see my links above). This is supposedly already widely used in Europe - although living in the US - I have not seen this first hand. The http://www.mhp.org site lists which countries have already adopted it and rolled it out.
CableLabs liked the iTV ideas developed by DVB-MHP - but it dod not work for the US cable market the way that the cable companies wanted it too.
So OCAP was developed - which is based on DVB's MHP spec (see link above). OCAP is at the heart of the Digital Cable Ready initiative by Cable Labs in the US - and is part of the CableCARD 2.0 compliance specifications for two-way cable (which MS won't support - probably for the same patent licensing and royalty issues).
To help keep these related standards from diverging too much - the "Globally Executable MHP" (or GEM) spec was developed and (1) BD-J (used in Blue-Ray), (2) OCAP (US cable TV standards for iTV), and ACAP (US terrestrial broadcast standards for iTV) are all based on this GEM spec. Furthermore, the existing MHP specs have been updated to conform to the GEM specs as well.
Actually reading these specs (GEM, MHP, OCAP, ACAP, etc.) is a bit of a nightmare as they are written in terms of each other, which make them very confusing to read. I would imagine that - given BD-J's basis on the GEM spec as well, much of this stuff is also really defined in the other specification documents. These documents are all available on line (see www.cablelabs.com for OCAP docs, for example).
The use of Java/J2ME is somewhat loose here - standard packages were dropped, modified in behavior, etc. and things might not work as you would expect a pure Java environment to work. For example, the notion of a "file system" in a digital broadcast is rather bizarre ... but it exists in some form.
So - while BD-J will present privacy issues - we are or soon will be facing similar issues with the iTV specs for cable, etc.
I suppose we should be able to watch our Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies without actually connecting the players up to an Internet connection if we are concerned about privacy (and who isn't?).
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#17 - "EVO" ... I think you make some excellent observations about privacy issues.
I would like to point out that many of the issues you raise already exist for the emerging interactive TV specifications - which are all based on the same Java foundations (much more so than you might realize).
It is pretty confusing - but hang in there ...
First there was DVB-MHP (see my links above). This is supposedly already widely used in Europe - although living in the US - I have not seen this first hand. The http://www.mhp.org site lists which countries have already adopted it and rolled it out.
CableLabs liked the iTV ideas developed by DVB-MHP - but it dod not work for the US cable market the way that the cable companies wanted it too.
So OCAP was developed - which is based on DVB's MHP spec (see link above). OCAP is at the heart of the Digital Cable Ready initiative by Cable Labs in the US - and is part of the CableCARD 2.0 compliance specifications for two-way cable (which MS won't support - probably for the same patent licensing and royalty issues).
To help keep these related standards from diverging too much - the "Globally Executable MHP" (or GEM) spec was developed and (1) BD-J (used in Blue-Ray), (2) OCAP (US cable TV standards for iTV), and ACAP (US terrestrial broadcast standards for iTV) are all based on this GEM spec. Furthermore, the existing MHP specs have been updated to conform to the GEM specs as well.
Actually reading these specs (GEM, MHP, OCAP, ACAP, etc.) is a bit of a nightmare as they are written in terms of each other, which make them very confusing to read. I would imagine that - given BD-J's basis on the GEM spec as well, much of this stuff is also really defined in the other specification documents. These documents are all available on line (see www.cablelabs.com for OCAP docs, for example).
The use of Java/J2ME is somewhat loose here - standard packages were dropped, modified in behavior, etc. and things might not work as you would expect a pure Java environment to work. For example, the notion of a "file system" in a digital broadcast is rather bizarre ... but it exists in some form.
So - while BD-J will present privacy issues - we are or soon will be facing similar issues with the iTV specs for cable, etc.
I suppose we should be able to watch our Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies without actually connecting the players up to an Internet connection if we are concerned about privacy (and who isn't?).